Opponent Nations for Early Mycaenean

[eques]

What nations would have been actual or at least feasible opponents for the above?

[Duncan Head]

What nations would have been actual or at least feasible opponents for the above?

There are possibly-Mycenaean warriors on a papyrus from Amarna fighting alongside Egyptians against Libyans. So Libyans certainly; and NKE must be feasible opponents, plenty of evidence for contact so maybe somebody raided somebody somewhen?

[Patrick Waterson]

Duncan, unless this is another papyrus, the consensus when I last looked was that the Mycenaeans and Libyans are both fighting against - and defeating - the Egyptians.

Assuming this still holds, we can add Egyptians to the list of possible Mycenaean opponents.  (There are other reasons for allowing this which are to do with high-ranking Egyptian officials appearing in the Pylos Linear B tablets.)

[Duncan Head]

It's not a subject I know much about, though in the DBMM lists the Egyptians can have some Mycenaean mercenaries - I took my interpretation from Kelder (2010):

Coming to the aid of the Egyptians are a number of warriors who, while wearing typical Egyptian white kilts, are equipped with helmets and various types of what may plausibly be argued to represent leather armour. Both the helmets and the two identifiable types of armour are not present elsewhere in the Egyptian iconographical record, and seem to identify a people other than those usually depicted in Egyptian paintings. It has been forcefully argued that the helmets depicted on the papyrus should be identified as boar's tusk helmets and that the armour worn by the warriors has close parallels with known Aegean types of armour. As a result, the warriors depicted on the papyrus most likely represent Mycenaeans, apparently in the service of the Pharaoh.

Going back to the original question, I see that the DBMM lists have only (apart from civil wars) the Early Hittite and Hittite Empire lists as opponents for the Early Mycenaeans - there are no other Anatolian lists, so these would presumably have to do proxy for anyone East of the Aegean who's not themselves Mycenaean. I would now add both Libyans and Egyptians.

[Andreas Johansson]

Going back to the original question, I see that the DBMM lists have only (apart from civil wars) the Early Hittite and Hittite Empire lists as opponents for the Early Mycenaeans - there are no other Anatolian lists, so these would presumably have to do proxy for anyone East of the Aegean who's not themselves Mycenaean. I would now add both Libyans and Egyptians.

It's perhaps worth pointing out that the DBMM list covers both Mycenaeans and Minoans, so some of the "civil" wars would actually be foreign.

[Patrick Waterson]

I took my interpretation from Kelder (2010):

OK, thanks for that. It looks as if fashion has changed since the British Museum published an article on the papyrus.